30 Under 30 In Science: Inventing The Future One Atom At A Time

"We need to develop better tools, a better understanding of the world around us, and better methods of continuing the human endeavor here on Earth."

That's a quote from 3Scan cofounder Cody Daniel, but it could describe the work of nearly every one of the incredible people in this year's Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science list. This year, the list features young scientists in fields ranging from astronomy to psychology to materials science.

As always, several people on this year's list are scientific entrepreneurs like Daniel, whose 3Scan is developing a microscope that allows for 3D-visualizations of tissue samples. Then there's Sam Parlett & Fred Turner, whose company TL Biolabs can provide genomic testing of beef and dairy cattle at the price of $15 per test. Conor Russomanno, cofounder of OpenBCI, is making open-source brain-computer interfaces for neuroscience researchers, while Spin Wang's company TetraScience is bringing the Internet of Things to the lab in order to streamline data collection.

This year's list also features a number of people working with artificial intelligence. Take 18-year-old Amber Yang, for example, who spent three years building an artificial neural network to predict the orbit of space junk. There's also Zhou Yu, an assistant professor at UC Davis working to make chatbots better understand humans by examining things like context and body language. And in the world of industry, there's Tomas Pfister, whose work for Apple on AI laid the foundation for a number of apps currently in use in the newest generation of iPhones.

Speaking of mobile phones, this year's list also features Dinesh Bharadia, who smashed the long-standing assumption that it was impossible for a radio to transmit and receive at the same time at the same frequency. His full-duplex radios have been commercialized and being adopted by mobile hardware companies. That work has also been cited and utilized by another member of this year's list, Negar Reiskarimian, who built the first miniaturized microchip capable of full-duplex wireless with a single antenna, which could end up doubling WiFi capabilities on a chip of less than half the size of current models.

3Scan cofounder Cody DanielJamel Toppin for Forbes

The people using the phones made possible by the work of the list members above might find themselves being studied by Lauren Sherman, whose research in psychology looks at how the use of social media impacts behavior. Those kinds of psychological impacts might also be of interest to Erik Hoel, whose work is focused on developing mathematical models of human consciousness that are already being used in clinical applications.

The researchers on this year's list aren't limited to improving existing technology, though. They're also looking into building entirely new paradigms of technology.

Take You Zhou, for example, who's developed a type of transistor that mimics brain synapses, which could lead to building computers that work more like brains. Or Prineha Narang, who's working on processes for quantum-engineered materials, which are built up atom-by-atom. On the other end of the atomic scale, there's Kristi Bradford, hard at work developing technology for asteroid mining.

The FORBES 30 Under 30 in Science list was created using nominations from a variety of sources and was reported by Sarah Hedgecock, Matt Perez, and Alex Knapp. The judges for this category were Sabrina Pasterski, a Ph.D. Candidate in Physics at Harvard and alum of the 2015 Under 30 list; and Dr. Danielle Bassett, a physicist and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks to all of them and to everyone who nominated candidates.

What do you think of the list? Join the conversation on Twitter with #30under30.